We arrived the day before and rented a car from Hertz at Heathrow. We stayed one night at the Premier Inn Quay side and I can not recommend it due to the extremely hard mattresses. We had some difficulty finding the Hertz location but it was basically across the street in a sort of strip mall where there were car repair shops. My husband dropped me off at the pier with all the luggage then went and dropped the car off. The walk back took him about 20 minutes.

It's hard to rate this cruise because the itinerary and ports were so amazing but the ship had some issues. The Caribbean Princess is an OK ship. I agree with some that say it needs a sprucing up but it was clean.

Embarkation went very smoothly. It only took about an hour. This was a very port intensive itinerary so we spent a lot of time off the ship. The “entertainment” on this ship was very disappointing. Ninety percent of the activities involved Princess trying to sell you something! The sea days were very boring. Some of the shows were ok and we particularly loved the Elton John impersonator. Our room steward Richard was very good with a great personality. The customer service was far better than our last Princess cruise on the Coral Princess. The food was also just OK. Nothing spectacular but we ate all our meals on the ship because restaurants in Norway are outrageously expensive. We had late seating at 8:15 which worked well for us as it gave us time to wind down and relax after a day in port. Our waiters were very good. by the way, as a New Englander, the lobster tails were a joke. Tiny white tails that looked and tasted like they'd been boiled for an hour! Our tablemates from Scotland and England wanted to know if they were typical lobster tails!! HECK NO! Also, the steak I got one night was horribly tough. My jaw got an excellent workout! Read more